Sunday, April 10, 2016

Weekly Report 8

For this weeks weekly report, I decided to write about how novelist Alaa Al Aswany contributed to the revolution in Egypt.
In the article I read about how Aswany studied the previous revolution of Egypt around 1919; he notes how the revolution was unexpected and took the world by storm. People called Aswany 'optimistic', because in interviews he would talk about how another revolution was brewing up."I was always optimistic, I was accused of being too optimistic by some friends. I believed that at some point there would be a revolution in Egypt."- Aswany

The Egyptian people were tired of living in poverty and it became to a point that they could no longer stand it and therefore revolted. In the article, I like how he notes that the Egyptians did not need countries like the US to help aid them through the revolution.

One deep lesson of what happened in Egypt is that we don’t need an American invasion to get rid of a dictator. We can do it ourselves without all the casualties or occupying another country. And we did that in eighteen days. This is the end of an era of the post-independence dictatorships, which were the model for the region. It’s a matter of time for the other dictators. I could give an exception for the Gulf countries because they have enough money to make their people satisfied or to delay the revolution.

The fact that Aswany is so analytical to the extent that he see's how the Gulf countries will continue to have monarchs because of the amount of money they pump out to their citizens (makes them satisfied with life). However, this trend will soon end, because there's a new wave in the Arab world. People want democracies.